So, A friend of mine has started a gaming service. ( HERE IT IS: https://dropleaf.io ) I let him know that I cofounded Hubski and that there were a number of gaming enthusiasts here. He asked if I would share his site with you guys. I'll just go ahead and share with you the entire follow up email he sent me:
- I remember that you had offered to share our service up on Hubski! We're looking for users and feedback, and I created a promo code Hubski50 that will give anyone 1/2 off for their first year (5 bucks a month) if they sign up.
Our website is dropleaf.io Thank you again! Let me know if you want any more info from me about that!
Also, I vaguely remember discussing conveyor belt sushi at Kula. If you Ed and Mark want to grab a late lunch, let me know!
So go, check out his site. Provide some feedback for the guy. Right now every single new user and new insight is helpful to him.
Thanks in advance. Now to shout-out to those that I know dig gaming:
johnnyFive, keifermiller, galen, rangergames, ButterflyEffect, francopoli, rd95, kleinbl00, mk, cgod, kantos, hyperflare, tigrisandeuphrates, Cortez, and anyone else...
He needs a better "how it works" section, preferably a page. My gut reaction is that this is some kind of scam and the site's explanation of three bullet points doesn't quell my fears. A nice in depth (or psudo in depth) explanation of what this is and how it works would help a bunch. Also, any words from indie developers about why this is good for them would make me feel better. Right now I'm just taking the word of a site I've never heard of. It's a great concept, but "Pandora for games" is very new and very scary to a lot of gamers. GOG got popular on the exact opposite sentiment. To thrive, a site like this will need to make a very appealing case to the sentimentally of modern gamers, which it currently doesn't.
Hey Isherwood, I'm one of the founders of dropleaf! Thank you so much for the feedback. If you want to know a bit more about who we are, here's a thing I wrote some time ago about what we're doing and why: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WEB5EgGD4MmC7Vuvi5Zg0_NgzGnHi4IJ_5Xja3ZMn_I/edit?usp=sharing I think you're right about the play on sentimentality, but we needed to make sure we got a functional landing page up and running first. We'll be working towards that.
You need a minimum viable product. Right now, from that doc, it seems like you're try to do several things and don't have a common thread to tie all of those things together. Based on your manifesto and the language on your site it seems like building an LGBTQ gaming community is going to be your central focus, but right now you have no community features so your site's messaging isn't selling the product you have. Conversely, you have the tools to provide games but you don't have language that explains that service (how it works and what you get) on your site. Your marketing is a narrative and your product is the protagonist. You want to tell this story where your protagonist is an art gallery - you can pay your dues and come and go as you please. You can enjoy the work in the gallery but you can't take it home with you, and down on the ground floor there's this wonderful little coffee shop where you and all the other art nerds can hang out and talk about your love without worry of being judged. A narrative like that ties together your themes and can be slowly rolled out over months or years. It makes it easier to consume because it solidifies your identity. (I'm currently short on time so forgive me for being curt or making assumptions. I really like marketing, I really like games, and I really think you have a very neat idea).
The google doc was more of a description of vision than anything else, and I don't think the website even once says LGBTQ (I just checked), but I think I take your point. I like the "gallery" metaphor, it's a really great one! Thank you for that, I'm totally going to steal it. I think making our initial messaging more games specific and clear as to exactly what we have right now is a great Idea, and will be working on that. Again, thank you for the feedback. By the way, we do have an MVP our client is up and running and has a bunch of very solid indie games to play. (Granted, We're not the ultimate arbiters of "viable," customers are)
Yeah, I was playing fast and loose with the assumptions on my post and I probably should have left those off but I glad you could still dig up the main point. I also like the gallery idea and just have this vision in my head of a web site that looks like an art gallery wall, with indie game demo videos playing in ornate frames.
That might be a thing we add for v2 of the website. I love that image. Your feedback up to this point has been super insightful, thank you! I'd appreciate it if you were able to hop onto the client and give it a try, Hubski50 will make it 5/month for your first year or WelcomeHome17 will give you your first month free. (Cancel anytime etc)
Alright, I've made an account and I'm on my free month. I've been playing around with the experience and I wanted to start out by saying I love the bones of the service. It's a really neat way to try out a ton of games and see what grabs me without that sense of obligation I usually have when I buy a game on it's own. I definitely didn't think I was going to want to play any of these, but there were a few that were way more intriguing than I thought. That said, I'm not sure I would have given the client much of a chance if you and I weren't in a conversation. What I've been chewing on is the identity of the client. There's nothing in the client that really says who you are. From my perspective, this is a neat little indie game launcher and not much else. And I keep going back to that idea of games as art and your client as a gallery. When I go to a museum or a gallery, a lot of my enjoyment comes from the information I get from the labels. Take a look at this It's a white rectangle with black, sans-serif text. It uses this very rigid but ultimately understated formatting to structure it's data. It's classy. So let's apply that idea to one of your games. --- Dowino Villeurbanne, France A Blind Legend, 2015 Citrus Engine The goal of A Blind Legend is to create a novel experience for players. To do this, Dowino developed a video game with no video. The game relies entirely on binaural audio, sound reproduced as the human ear would hear it, to direct the player through their journey. Sighted players should appreciate the change to their senses as they play, noticing the rising acuity in hearing. Players should also take a moment to appreciate the depth of the sound design and how the developer layers different noises to produce a full and vibrant world. --- We put this on a piece of paper and we stick that piece of paper to a wall. So you've got your art, you've got your label, and you've got a wall. In the client, above the fold, you have a main exhibit. Commit to having a new set of game every month, every quarter, every year, whatever, that are tied together by some common theme - accessibility, aesthetic, developer location, engine, theme, etc. Do a little write up explaining the theme and why it's important to look at these works. This does two things - it gives you a dynamic front page that provides a new value to your customers, and it opens up your service to much older games. There might be some classic from 1999 that was the first to implement rudimentary particle physics and it's worth looking at in the context of this exhibit. Under that you can have your dynamically created exhibits - most popular, new art, whatever - but they're also exhibits that get their own static write up and gallery space. Blow you can have an extended collection that is much more compact and only shows the information on hover. I know I'm just taking an idea and running with it, but for me this cements your identity - you want games to be seen as an art. You want people to appreciate what games can be. You want people to have discussions together. You want gaming to be appreciated. The way I see it, this design would push your users to see that identity on every page.
Thank you so much for the feedback, We love the art gallery idea, and we're actually setting things up so that I have the ability to make the copy around the games more in line with what we'd like it to be, rather than copypaste from steam, or whatever got typed in. I really like the idea. It's a great visual.
Thank you so much for the feedback, We love the art gallery idea, and we're actually setting things up so that I have the ability to make the copy around the games more in line with what we'd like it to be, rather than copypaste from steam, or whatever got typed in. I really like the idea. It's a great visual.
Agreed. Good starting points for the three bullet points: - Subscribe: Well... no, that's straight forward. - All-you-can-pay: List titles to match what new and old games are being referenced by whoever wrote the bit. Further, as with any product, I want to know exactly what I'm getting into and whether it’s worth my time. Don’t let the user have to search elsewhere for what “Cluster Truck” is. While I’m on the site, you want to keep me there as long as possible. If these indie games are critically acclaimed, then brag about it! "These are the titles that got X awards for Y by Z magazine - all hand picked for you." Or something to the effect of what this site has to offer that gamers would be attracted to in the first place, alongside genres available. This comes down to presentation. If they are totally new games, that’s totally fine and the blog Bottom line: move the review blog portion of which games reviewed that appear on the site to its own page (with the all-you-can-pay section, or at least make it clear option to go to). - Community: Similar to the previous points, it boils down to what, why and how. The why seems to be in the rhetoric of the site, which is pretty sweet. The what/how is the mechanisms by which people interact with community; that is, list features. Is there a forum for members? Can it be accessed by non-members as a secondary form of advertising the community itself? How about chat rooms or voice channels? In-game, or not? This is a good place to showcase the client itself and user interactions on the site with a suite of photos ranging from the clients player-to-player exchanges or otherwise. Personally, and I've written this here before, if I invest in a game, it's because the game style is attractive to me, simplistic grinding mixed with creativity: ARK or Minecraft; action and strategy: League of Legends; simple to use with great action, graphics and balancing: Shadowgun: Deadzone. Half of those listed were free to play, but each one I've invested easily 500+ hours in easily as well as dished out money for cosmetics or extras to show support. I guess my point here is show why this selection is worth one's time and money. Or, why is it something that can bring people together. Are the indie games multiplayer focused and themed towards community involvement? Are the games sheerly phenomenal with mindful discussion points that provoke discourse? Be generous with what you and your games chosen have to offer that’s different from, say, steam. Let the pictures of games on the site lead to review blogs or the dev profiles (if you have one). The community itself in a given game will either be great, or not (or both! all depends on the circles you encounter), but some of the friends I've made are from mutual interests that has carried us through different games over 5 years and going. By now, people have found communities easily through online games, boards, and aggregators. Who is the target market, and what is the appeal to pull them from games they can otherwise easily vet?
The website design is sick, I'm kind of in love with the Stripe style websites that have been coming out lately. There's some overflow going on desktop, just a heads up. Clicking Download on the navbar and making it download immediately gave me a heart attack. At least distinguish the button with a download symbol. I would kill to have some short gifs (instead of video) of the games that are featured. Clustertruck is the only recognizable game on the front page. One thing that I've noticed in my life is that choice overload is a big thing with games. If I were to sign up for this, it would be to play a single game I had in mind, and then browse around a few games I've heard of, pretty much the same reason I used to download entire libraries of SNES emulator games.
I can't find a list of games. Their last blog entry is from summer of last year. looks like it's not being actively maintained. Better to just take the blog link off the page. There is some blah blah about community building but almost nothing about product or price. Maybe they are offering three games to play? I can't tell their carousel doesn't work and I can only see three games. Product and price are the only things that will drive adoption. I like games but the only media I'll ever get my monies worth from a subscription is music, so this isn't really the kind of thing I'd shell out for. It's not ready for market but best of luck.
Completely agree with this. I like the concept of being able to try out indie games freely and experimenting, but without knowing what I'm getting into there's no way I'm paying for it. It's going to have to be a wide enough selection that it's not worth getting the games themselves DRM free forever from GOG or Humble Bundle. For example for only a little more yearly ($120 (without the discount code) vs $132) you can get ~90 games to keep forever from Humble monthly. The selection would have to include significantly more than that for me to consider renting the games.
Ponders The most enjoyable games I've played recently are : Firewatch, Dropsy, and A Bird Story. All are short, story driven, and don't have much replay value. I could understand wanting to play them this way. That said I'm glad I own A Bird Story, Dropsy and Firewatch. The last two have amazing soundtracks. But I may just not be hip enough to be comfy with streaming media that seems important to me. I do keep full local copies of podcasts that I enjoy. But all this is kind of moot Because I'm typing on a Linux machine, and I see no mention of what platforms are supported so I assumed this was Windows only. Good luck!